catapult magazine

i’m amazed at how quickly other countries latch on to precedents set by the US. (i was thinking of, back when the “war on terror” started, how israel picked up on the phrase and used it to justify their actions when they went in with their tanks and what-nots and shut down life for the Palestinians and further destroyed their economy).

now i’m thinking of the pre-emptive strike precedent (full disclosure: i think it was a very very bad decision). now we have india making a case for a preemptive strike against pakistan (bush’s logic works here—even better, actually since the weapons of mass destruction are known to exist—and because the history of disagreement and conflict between these countries definitely could constitute a potential threat.) So, do we say “bombs away” or do we come up with a reason why that logic works for us and not for them?

i guess the fact that pakistan has nukes (and has warned of “massive retaliation”) could be a deterrent. lesson: pick on countries smaller and/or less heavily armed than yourself, and try to get as many nukes as you can, or you’re easy pickings.

what do you think?

Well said.

the “do as i say and not as i do” approach seems to be a fairly common one (am I wrong?). Iraq breaks the Geneva conventions by publishing pictures of captured soldiers, but yet somehow we saw images of captured Iraqi’s on the front page fairly regularly (and images of captured Afghani’s in shackles and hoods as they’re marched into Cuba) with no word from Rumsfeld.

(By the way, this isn’t just a Bush-administration thing—it’s a lot broader. There was a lot of talk of hypocrisy around the time Clinton started bombing Kosovo, when on exactly the same day, he said—regarding the Columbine shootings—“We must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their anger and to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.”)

This was the official N. Korean response to the Iraq invasion:

“The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation, it is necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent.”

and no word on the several hundred Afghan and Arab captives in Guantanamo. who speaks for these men? i doubt they got to make a phone call to their lawyer.

maybe we could make the base into a zoo so our kids can see what terrorists look like. they’re already in cages, so all we have to do is let the cruise ships dock.

Correction: who speaks for these men (and boys)?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,942347,00.html

I don’t have as much of a problem with the US being the world’s police officer if we apply the standards we are supposed to hold police officers to, to ourselves. When we abandon ideas like “innocent until proven guilty” which, frankly, are not always convenient, we become not an officer of the law, but a bully.

Particularly good insights in several earlier posts about how the language we use to justify our actions sometimes comes back to get us.

I hope this thread is not yet another attempt to blame the U.S., this time for certain steps Israel has taken (steps the U.S. has warned Israel against taking) or N. Korea or India or any other nation. These nations have responsibility for their own actions. If Israel is searching out members of terrorist organizations, then it’s engaged in a war on terror. If N. Korea (officially) thinks it can avoid war by having nuclear capabilities (I assume that’s what they mean by their statement), they’re mistaken—if anything, N. Korea’s attempt to obtain a strong physical deterrant threatens other nations and may bring them INTO battle, rather than keep them from a war. If India really does need to act pre-emptively, then it ought to make its case before the U.N., just like the U.S. did, hoping that the U.N. will get involved properly. This term “Fallout” connotes a natural effect or result that is bound to occur because of the U.S. action. But the perspective Israel, N. Korea and India have taken is their own interpretation of events in Iraq, not some unavoidable repercussion enacted by mindless robot-nations who only know how to react to what the U.S. does. Such an assumption is an offense to these three nations, and ought to be offensive to the rest of the world, whose nations have their own self-will and powers to respond in all sorts of creative ways to what the U.S. has done.

Sure this thread is an attempt to blame the US for setting harmful international precidents. I think that’s what laryn initially had in mind anyways, and I think the blame is justified.

Of course each country is responsible for its actions, but if the United States thumbs its nose at the international community in order to “do the right thing,” that makes it a heck of a lot easier for other countries to act with impunity for whatever they consider to be “the right thing.”

In any case, diplomacy and internatinal cooperation are undermined—unilateralism and military force win the day.

Grant, the point is to indicate how the things we say and do have unintended implications (“fallout”). I agree completely that other nations have responsibility for their actions. But there is also a measure of blame to be doled out for the precedents that we have set, I think.

What I was asking is how we deal with the situation where the logic we use to justify our actions can be used by other nations (who are still responsible for their actions) to do things that we think would probably best not be done. It’s not like we can say to them, “Your logic is flawed,” at least not without looking blatantly two-faced.

That’s in response to your question about the intentions of this thread. I do have a couple of questions on your other comments.

If India really does (in its own humble opinion) need to act preemptively, and it goes before the UN and says “We’d like it if y’all would help us bomb Pakistan, but if you don’t want to, we’re going to do it anyway,” I imagine that a lot of people would think it was a bad idea. But what can we say about it?

If Israel is really involved in a war on terror, why have we warned them against it? Is it because in their war on terror they have introduced their own form of terror? If so, why have our warnings been so half-hearted? (What they are doing is “not helpful”).

If North Korea sees the preemption logic at work in Iraq (a conflict for which we refused to take the possibility of using nukes “off the table”), and sees how a country that has been disarmed falls quickly, and finds itself on a list of three “axis of evil” (one of whom has just been demolished, leaving two remaining, as sabers continue to rattle)…and they conclude that to disarm is to invite destruction, what are we going to say that will dissuade them from trying to achieve nukes? If the options seem to be, “do not upgrade your weapons and you will be destroyed” or “attempt to upgrade your weapons and chance being destroyed OR possibly getting weapons that might keep the attackers at bay,” I think they’ll choose the latter, and have we given them any reason not to?

I read this the other day, and it reminded me a bit of this thread.

More “fallout?”
http://www.motherjones.com/news/warwatch/2003/21/we_419_03.html#one